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The Subnautica 2 early access launch that spawned so much recrimination (and so many billable hours) is finally here, and all that sweat and anger seems kind of funny in hindsight—because after all that drama, Subnautica 2 is good, and it's a hit, too.
Subnautica 2 launched like a rocket on Steam, surging to more than 370,000 concurrent players in its first 30 minutes. That number would climb by another 100,000 before finally starting to ease off—not bad at all for a random Thursday in May. But it turns out that there are a great deal more people who own the game but just haven't played it yet, because they have to work at a popular PC gaming news site or whatever.
Over 1 million Subnauts have already dived into Subnautica 2 🤯 We can't thank you enough for your support!
— @subnautica.bsky.social (@subnautica.bsky.social.bsky.social) 2026-05-14T21:38:51.467Z
The timing is notable: That post went up at 12 pm ET on May 14, one hour after Subnautica 2 launched. One hour!
The rapidity of that ascent, like hauling ass from a Reaper Leviathan, is not entirely surprising given that Subnautica 2 was the most-wishlisted game on Steam, hitting more than 5 million wishlists just prior to launch: It's almost inevitable that a game is going to put up big numbers when that many people are giving it the eyeball.
That also means that the vast majority of people who added it to their wishlist are yet to commit, so the potential for more millions to come in the relatively near future is clear. That's especially true when you consider that at least some of those hour-one Subnautica 2 purchases were made by people who hadn't wishlisted it first—not to mention the "very positive" rating on Steam, which is bound to help convince people that they don't need to wait for early access issues to be hammered out before they dive in.
That's good news for Unknown Worlds, but also bad news of a sort for parent company Krafton. Despite Krafton's claims that it was simply doing what was best for the game, courts ultimately ruled that its dismissal of Unknown Worlds principals Ted Gill, Charlie Cleveland, and Max McGuire was driven by a desire to avoid paying them a $250 million bonus that will be earnable if Subnautica 2 achieved certain sales targets.
A filing shared by Kotaku's Ethan Gach in 2025 said Krafton was putting together a plan to sell 2-3 million copies by the end of that year, which "would have left the sellers poised to easily make their full $250 million earnout." The specific sales numbers required for that earnout aren't known, but given that Subnautica 2 is more than a third of the way to the high end of the target cited in that filing in its first hour—and that the judge in the lawsuit extended the deadline by nine months to make up for the time lost—I'd say it's very likely Krafton is going to eat it on this one.
